


You Can't Name a Baby Freddie Mercury

by superqueerdanvers



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Post-Canon, and make some interesting naming decisions, brief mention of transphobia, characterization is based mostly on the show, crowley and aziraphale adopt a bunch of kids, crowley loves kids, good omens fluff, ineffable parents, mention of children in hospitals, the footnotes and description of crowley's flat are based on the book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 20:09:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19341733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superqueerdanvers/pseuds/superqueerdanvers
Summary: Crowley brings home two newborn babies.





	You Can't Name a Baby Freddie Mercury

            The Them were around 15 the first time Crowley brought it up. “Have you ever thought about…kids?

            Aziraphale looked up from his book. “Kids?”

            “You know, children. Having them.”

            “We have Adam.”

            “Well, yeah, but he’s not really _ours_ , is he? He’s got his own parents; we’re just…family friends. Weird uncles. It’s not like we raised him.”

            “Weird uncles?”

            Then a customer walked into the bookshop, and they both forgot what they had been talking about.

            Every so often, Crowley would mention kids again. When a couple of 13-year-olds wandered into the bookshop, or when they saw a group of kids playing at the park, or when the Them graduated. But Aziraphale was happy with just the two of them. “And besides, we tried to raise Warlock, didn’t we?” he added. “And look how he turned out! Thank goodness he wasn’t the real Antichrist!”

            “But that’s what I’m saying! We weren’t trying to raise him as a kid; we were raising him stop Armageddon. If we just focused on loving a kid and being good parents, they might turn out fine. Adam did.”

            “I suppose that’s true. But I’m just not sure I’m ready to be a father.”

            It wasn’t that Aziraphale didn’t want kids. In fact, once Crowley brought it up, he quite liked the idea. But it had only been a few years since the near-apocalypse, only a few years that they had been able to spend time together without fear of Heaven and Hell finding out. They had had feelings for each other for much longer than that, of course, and they had been friends even longer than that. But this more open relationship was still fairly new, and Aziraphale wasn’t sure he was ready to bring in another person just yet.

            In the meantime, Crowley took to volunteering in the pediatric departments of nearby hospitals. He visited children, read to them, and did art projects with them. No one seemed to notice the startling number of terminally ill children who all miraculously recovered after a visit from the same volunteer.

            A few years later, Crowley burst into his and Aziraphale’s flat with two tiny bundles in his arms. “Aziraphale! We need to get a crib! Or two cribs? And car seats, and formula, I think? And –“

            “Crowley, what on Earth are you talking about?” Aziraphale walked into the room, then stopped. “Are those… _babies_?”

            “Twins. Girls, I think. I know, I know I should’ve asked you first, but they’re so tiny and their mother couldn’t keep them and I couldn’t just _leave_ them there and…Please, Angel, we have to keep them.”

            “Hold on, leave them where? How did you find these babies in the first place?”

            “At the hospital. I was talking to one of the nurses in the neonatal unit, and she said the babies’ mother couldn’t keep them. They’d be put into foster care, and who knows what might happen then? They might be separated! Or placed with a bad parent! So I told the nurse we’d take care of them.”

            Aziraphale looked at the babies and melted. He may not have planned to have children yet, but he couldn’t say no to two tiny babies who needed help. Especially not when their tufts of bright red, sticky-uppy hair reminded him of Crowley. He smiled at Crowley. “Of course we will. I’ll find out how to adopt children. Ah…what are their names?”

            “Oh! Uh…I don’t believe they have names yet. Do you have any ideas?”

            Aziraphale thought for a minute. “Ezekiel?[1] Or Mildred, that’s a good name.”

            Crowley stared at him.

            “All right, not Ezekiel or Mildred. Jebediah? Orville? Donaldina?”

            “ _Donaldina?!_ ”

            “It’s a perfectly normal name!”

            Just then, one of the babies started to cry. Crowley sniffed the air. “She needs to be changed. Actually, they both do.”

            “Changed?” Aziraphale asked. “Into what?”

            “Not them, their diapers. Seriously, you’d think you’d never cared for a baby before.” Crowley retorted.

            “I haven’t!”

            Crowley carefully adjusted his grip on the babies so he could snap his fingers and miracle a changing table and clean diapers into the corner of the room.[2] Luckily, he still remembered how to change a diaper from his days as Warlock’s nanny. He set the babies down on the changing table and beckoned Aziraphale over to show him how. As Crowley changed the first baby’s diaper, Aziraphale continued to think about names.

            “What about Jebediah? Or Petronella – no, even I know that one’s bad. Ooh! How about Prudence?”

            “Now you’re just trying to get a rise out of me. And then fasten the tabs like this, and…done! Just roll the old one up and toss it in the trash.” Crowley tossed the used diaper into a garbage can that hadn’t been there a moment before. “Why don’t you try now?”

            Aziraphale gingerly unfastened the second baby’s diaper, and with Crowley’s help, he carefully changed her diaper. That done, he looked up at Crowley. “What about Ineffable?”

            Crowley paused, thinking. Slowly, he said, “I like it. But it’d be ridiculous as a first name. A middle name, maybe?”

            Aziraphale smiled. “That’s one middle name down. What were your ideas?”

            “Freddie Mercury.”

            “Crowley! You can’t name a baby Freddie Mercury!”

            “Why not? Freddie Mercury’s cool!” Crowley protested.

            “Well, can you imagine a child going around introducing herself as Freddie Mercury?”

            “She wouldn’t have to. Freddie’s a normal enough name, and Mercury can be her middle name – it’s not any stranger than Ineffable.”

            Aziraphale considered that for a moment. “I suppose not. Alright then, Freddie Mercury it is. Now we just have to think of a first name for little Ineffable here.”

            They spent the rest of the day babyproofing the flat, turning one room into a nursery, and researching the adoption process. As they worked, they suggested names, but none of them felt right.

            Just as they were going to bed, Aziraphale sat up. “Hope!”

            “What?” said Crowley, who had already started to drift off. It had been a long day, even for a demon.

            “Baby Ineffable’s first name. Hope.”

            Crowley smiled at him sleepily. “Perfect,” he replied, then curled up and went to sleep.

            The next day, a few forms and a trip to the courthouse later, Crowley and Aziraphale were officially the proud parents of Freddie Mercury and Hope Ineffable Fell-Crowley.[3]

            For the first several months, both Crowley and Aziraphale stayed home with the twins. It was a good thing that although Crowley liked sleep, and his liking for sleep was beginning to rub off on Aziraphale, neither of them actually _needed_ to sleep, because young babies generally don’t sleep through the night, and Freddie and Hope were no exception.

            Eventually, Aziraphale decided to go back to his bookshop. Someone needed to look after it, after all. Crowley stayed home, watching “Mary Poppins” and singing Queen to the twins. He grew his hair out, and when Freddie and Hope were old enough, the three of them braided each other’s hair. Aziraphale read to them, and his bookshop acquired a large collection of children’s and parenting books.

            One night when the twins were four, Aziraphale turned to Crowley and said, “Crowley, I think I’d like another kid.”

            Crowley beamed. “I love you, Angel!”

            They brought home baby Oscar a few months later, and then they just kept adopting. They adopted Petrichor[4] when Oscar was four and the twins were eight. Five years later, they decided to adopt an older child and welcomed seven-year-old Owen into the family. When Freddie’s friend Astrid came out to her as a trans girl and admitted that her parents didn’t accept her, she was living with the Fell-Crowley family within a week. Within two weeks, Aziraphale and Crowley had officially adopted her. A couple years after that, nine-year-old Evan joined the family.

            Although the real estate agent who had sold Crowley the flat would have sworn it had only one bedroom, it somehow never felt crowded. It did, however, lose its sophisticated air. School art projects joined the Mona Lisa sketch on the wall. Books littered the coffee table. The back of the white couch was draped with a colorful knotted fleece blanket Oscar had made. In short, the minimalist flat became a home.

            When Hope, Freddie, and Astrid finished sixth form, and the whole family celebrated with dinner at the Ritz. Freddie stood up. “I’m gonna see if they’ll let me play the piano.”

            Aziraphale glanced over at the piano. He realized that the area was already set up with microphones, two guitars (regular and bass), and a drum set. “It looks like they’re already set up for a band. Maybe another day would be better.”

            “Well, I’m at least going to ask.”

            Hope stood up too. “I’ll come with you.”

            “Me too,” added Astrid, as she and the rest of the kids followed Freddie and Hope to the piano.

            “Well, if you’re all going…” Crowley moved to get up.

            “No!” Owen yelped.

            Crowley raised an eyebrow. “It’s, um, part of the Ineffable Plan?” Owen continued.

            Crowley looked at Aziraphale, who shrugged, as confused as he was.

            Freddie said something to an employee, who nodded. She led her siblings to music area and sat down at the piano. Astrid sat down at the drum set. Oscar and Hope picked up the guitars, and they, Owen, Evan, and Petrichor stood in front of the microphones. As Oscar and Hope started tuning, Aziraphale turned to Crowley. “They can’t just use other people’s instruments!”

            “I don’t think they are, at least, not without permission,” Crowley replied slowly, “That’s Hope’s guitar. And isn’t Freddie’s girlfriend in a band?”

            “They planned this! How did we not know?” He eyed Crowley. “They must have learned from you.”

            Crowley grinned. “Good for them.”

            Freddie started to play. Everyone at the Ritz immediately recognized the opening bars. Then she started to sing. “Mama, just killed a man…”

            Astrid joined her on drums, and then Oscar and Hope came in on bass and guitar. At “I see a little silhouetto of a man,” the other kids joined in.

            “Remember that night after you delivered the Antichrist?” Aziraphale whispered to Crowley. “You said that if we didn’t stop Armageddon, there’d be no music left but The Sound of Music. And now we have seven singing children. Funny, the way things turn out.”

            As the children sang, Crowley murmured, “You might even call it…ineffable.”

 

[1] Aziraphale and Crowley understood that humans generally had genders, and Crowley, at least, had some idea of the kind of names popular in the twenty-first century, but neither of them quite understood that names can be gendered. Although even if they had understood that, they probably would not have cared. So neither of them had any problem giving a baby girl a “male” name.

[2] Could he have simply miracled their diapers clean? Absolutely. But he had just brought home two newborn babies, so he had a lot on his mind.

[3] This process is usually much more complicated and time-consuming, but then, the prospective parents don’t usually have occult or ethereal powers.

[4] Freddie, Hope, and Oscar picked his name out of one of Aziraphale’s dictionaries.


End file.
